***
As the day’s heat came up around Suarez’s tank with the air conditioning off, the crew began to overheat. By noon all four were stripped to the waist and dripping with sweat. The smoldering wreck of the first sergeant’s tank next to them had filled their interior with a suffocating burnt-rubber smell. Walt Hebert, the loader, was taking it the worst. Little streams of perspiration trickled over his ebony skin from head to foot and he began to get the shakes, panting and groaning like a hurt animal.
“I gotta get outta here, Captain,” he pleaded. “Just let me go topside for a minute in the fresh air. They won’t see me, I promise.”
“No, we gotta sit tight.”
“But I’m dying in here. My heart’s gonna explode.” Walt clutched at his chest and Suarez could see his heart pounding in his ribcage. His face was puffy and his eyes were starting to bug out.
Walt was the youngest man in the tank and wasn’t used to the tight quarters. He was gonna lose it, Suarez knew, if they didn’t watch out for him. Heat stroke could make a man delirious and Walt was on the brink.
“It’s okay,” Suarez soothed. “You’ll make it all right, man. Just be cool. We’ll get out of this somehow, no sweat.” That was the wrong thing to say.
“I gotta have air!” Walt leaned back in his seat and rolled his head from side to side. “I can’t breathe.”
“Come on, soldier,” Suarez snapped. “Maintain, man. They’d be all over us if you went out there.”
Walt clamped his eyes shut and knit his brows, concentrating hard. He drew a long deep breath, blew it out, and then drew another. “Okay,” he exhaled. “I’m all right now. Just had to catch my breath.”
“Sure Walt, take it easy.”
Walt settled back in his loader’s seat beside the cannon breach, drew in another deep breath of the stuffy cabin air and exhaled again.
“That’s good, man,” Suarez told Walt. But he was thinking, Now if I can just get my own heart to stop pounding.
Walt mumbled, “I wonder what it’s like inside a tank when it explodes? It would be easy enough for me. I’m right in the middle of the ammo. I’d just splat like a bug on a windshield. But you guys, you’re farther away. Maybe you’d get your legs blown off. Maybe you’d start burning.”
“Shut up, Walt,” hissed Pat Quinn, fidgeting with his gun sight. “None of us would be around long enough to write a book report.”
Suarez drummed his fingers on the armrest of his command chair. It was going to be a long wait. He stood up from his seat and looked through the 360-degree periscopes of the command hatch cupola. Outside, the prairie shimmered with heat waves. Smoldering tanks and shattered walking machines dotted the battlefield. He didn’t see many intact enemy but he saw enough. Four walking machines stood guard at the portal doors half a mile away and several more moved around among the wrecks salvaging parts, gathering bodies or whatever the heck they were doing. At the right-hand portal, two more walking machines escorted a captured Army supply-truck into the mountain’s interior. Suarez could just make out what was in the truck’s open back and it made him queasy: a dozen men in Army uniforms. Captured Fox Troop soldiers. Only God knew what awaited them inside. Suarez wanted to fire up the tank and do his best to save them but that was out of the question. To move an inch right now would mean certain death. A dozen enemy machines would be firing at them before they got up to full speed. “Maybe tonight we’ll risk moving,” he said softly. “Maybe not, but there’ll come a time to move.”
He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. Walt was resting easier now. The cabin grew quiet except for the sound of four men breathing. With Walt cooling it, the only fears Suarez had to face were his own. Just how long could they sit and stew? He didn’t know. Would he be the next one to lose it? He didn’t know that, either.
Maria, he thought. Pray for me. Ask the Lord to give me strength.
Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall Page 58
